Affecting change in the business environment

MIT professor-consultant Michael Hammer calls peoples’ innate resistance to change “the most perplexing, annoying, distressing, and confusing part” of the change process. Nevertheless, our text points out, resistance must be overcome or the change cannot take place.
The reasons people are resistant to change include:
Loss of security since the familiar is where we are all most comfortable. Taking away familiarity threatens security and thereby creates resistance;
Fear of economic loss which comes about because of the aforementioned loss of security and also because the change may actually require layoffs or reduced wages;
Loss of power and control as happened in many of the different changes that took place in my previous company. In some cases, reorganization calls for power to shift;
Reluctance to change old habits – “Old habits die hard” is a saying that rings very true in business. People become very programmed and then reluctant to learn new processes;
Selective...